When Larkin Hammond was a young child, she began cooking on a wood stove in her Italian grandmother’s kitchen. “She didn’t cook by recipe,” Hammond says. “She was the first farm-to-table person I met.” Hammond’s mother and grandmother also owned a neighborhood restaurant together.

It was those experiences that laid the groundwork for Hammond’s life, a life that includes a string of successful food-oriented businesses – Larkin’s on the River, Grill Marks, and Larkin’s Events and Catering in Greenville, as well as four other concepts and locations in Columbia and North Carolina under the Larkin’s Restaurant banner. And now, there’s a new addition.